ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
To carry out this study, the evaluation team was supported by numerous individuals and organisations and we take this opportunity to express our sincere thanks to them all. The first to be mentioned by name are the institutions that provided technical and organisational assistance to the team during preparation of the evaluation, in the reference group, and with the collection of data: the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ), the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit GmbH (GIZ) and the Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt (PTB). We would like to express particular thanks for their trustful cooperation, and for the open and objective discussions of even critical aspects of the modality.
The implementation of the case studies in the three regions would have been considerably more difficult without the practical support of the implementing organisations, the responsible regional divisions at the BMZ, and the German embassies. We also thank the experts we interviewed from the BMZ, the implementing organisations, other DAC donors and the scientific community. Their knowledge and experience were extremely helpful and valuable for the results of the evaluation. We are grateful to the many people in the sixteen countries – especially the staff of the partner institutions involved – who took the time for in-depth discussions with us and answered our numerous questions. The expertise and the high quality of the work of our consultants Manaíra Assunção and Stefan Tominski likewise contributed to the success of the case studies.
Special thanks go to the external peer reviewers Nadine Piefer-Söyler and Dr Sven Grimm, who gave us very helpful input and comments with regard to content and methodology on the central products of the evaluation.
We sincerely thank Lutz Meyer, who enriched the evaluation with his enormous wealth of experience and expertise and is now enjoying his well-deserved retirement. Our thanks also go to our colleagues at DEval who critically scrutinised our work and whose comments contributed to the quality of the report. This is especially true of our internal peer reviewers Helge Roxin and Christoph Hartmann.
For the full duration of this process, the evaluation was supported by Theresa Müller, Judith Ihl and Stephanie Knoll. We sincerely thank them for their great commitment and personal dedication. Finally, we would like to thank Teresa Vogel, Rebecca Maicher and Amelie Bornemann for their practical support throughout the evaluation.
